Managing Women as a Christian Man – Part 3: Bring the Pain
A pathway to engendering respect in your relationships
For several years, many red pill discussions have centered on the need for men to ensure that their personal values and priorities are the values and priorities that govern their relationships. The man sets the tone; the rules if you will, and he engenders compliance from the woman. In red pill jargon, this is known as maintaining frame. It is generally accepted that a man’s frame will lead the relationship to balance and order; to the things that facilitate trust and intimacy. To stability and peace.
Generally speaking, a woman’s frame will lead to chaos, to the loss of trust and intimacy. And to instability. That’s because, generally speaking, women lead with their desires, not their values. And generally speaking, men are just the opposite, except where it concerns women, where their values tend to fail. It is men’s weakness in the face of women’s pursuit of pleasure that is our Achille’s Heel.
I’ve seen the results of men failing to maintain frame with women in thousands of men I’ve worked with over the years. They show up from vastly different demographics, different races, religions, and socioeconomic groups; all with nearly identical stories. At least they all start the same. In the effort to achieve and maintain her happiness, her wishes became the adopted cause of the relationship. Her wants and desires, whether fleeting and fickle or endlessly obsessive, became the relationship’s unspoken raison d'être. His role as the primary enabler of her pleasure seeking was cast accordingly. And his frame was crushed under the weight of her unceasing desires. She grew accustomed to hearing yes, and he got used to being invisible, except as needed to facilitate her desires.
(Recipe for Disaster)
By the way, all of this is a byproduct of relationships predicated on the insanity of modern romantic chivalry, as the practice of it permanently infantilizes women and leaves no role but enabler for men. Talk about toxic! You can’t start out on bended knee, bearing extravagant gifts that promise a lifetime of indulgence, embracing that kind of twisted ethos, and expect to stand strong later without resistance. “Happy wife, happy life,” is the lament of broken men, camouflaged in false wisdom.
And what do we find when we turn to scripture? Confirmation after confirmation that man’s weakness with women precedes the fall. From Adam, to Sampson, to King David, to King Solomon, to Ahab, to scores of other scriptural references, the bible reveals that weakness. It also lays waste to any naïveté about women’s nature.
Now, I could go on for a few thousand words on the fantastical paradox of women’s “happiness,” and whether even such a thing exists, but in the end it doesn’t matter. It’s imperative that you reject the foolishly romantic notion of her happiness as the focal point of an adult relationship and let your values and wisdom lead the way. I know, millions of women just vanished from the available pool. And for that you can be grateful. Still, I am convinced there is a small percentage of women who can and will learn from a shrewd, highly masculine, and godly man.
Endlessly analyzing women doesn’t serve our purpose here, which is to provide a strategy that may help you prevent the train wreck of a relationship dominated by a feminine frame all hopped up on romantic chivalry.
And of course, I must issue the standard caveats. I assume that you are a mentally healthy man of good, Christian values. I take for granted that your default setting is to treat all people with respect, yourself included. You’re a man with values and self-discipline that will serve a long-term, successful relationship with a woman.
I also assume that you’re a man ready to part ways with women who can’t or won’t submit to your values. And, importantly, you’re a man who knows that the odds of success are a crap shoot at best. That’s life in the big city. And it is why the single, red pill path is a perfectly viable, scripturally supported way of life.
Now, concerning the matter of getting a woman’s willing compliance, I suggest these things in particular because in my mind the most important thing about a man’s frame is in his ability to set and enforce vastly underappreciated matters of decorum.
Seriously, respect is the secret sauce of long-term coexistence, and it’s precisely what is missing in every troubled relationship I’ve ever seen. When infatuation fades and the gritty routine of relationship life, with all its inherent conflicts sets in, respect is what carries gets you through. It’s what carries you through the power struggles that all relationships must endure. Indeed, one of the old truisms from my days working alongside marriage counselors is that you can tell when the marriage is over when one person rolls their eyes while the other one talks. It’s an expression of disrespect that conveys that the marriage is probably doomed.
From an article in Good Housekeeping about marital therapy, we find the following: “Yes, that eye-rolling, disgusted, angry disdain that some people display when discussing problems with their other halves is a sure sign they’re headed for divorce.” *
And this is where I suggest that the right man can take the lead with the right woman, by prohibiting such conduct in the relationship.
If you’ll indulge me, I want to focus on that last part a bit longer. It’s simple relationship physics. If you don’t have a rigid, unyielding commitment to treating her with respect, then you have no moral foundation to correct her for disrespecting you. To lead, you must set an exceptional example. You can’t have standards for her that you can’t deliver yourself. Even at your most angry or disappointed.
That’s a huge challenge, given how frustrating women can be in their pursuit of pleasure and control. And even though you won’t be perfect, perfection is the standard you must pursue. And it is the standard to which you must hold her accountable.
That said, I suggest you treat disrespect from her, no matter how slight or casual, as a showstopper in your relationship. From day one, any disrespect should be confronted and eliminated. By eliminated, I mean that you must apply that rigid, unyielding standard to her, each and every time, without exception. She must be held responsible for her actions, and she must accept that responsibility and correct the behavior to return to communion with you.
That means if you’re taking her out to dinner and she’s disrespectful and refuses to correct, you turn the car around (like she’s a misbehaving child) drop her off and go find something to do on your own. I don’t care if it is a birthday or anniversary or gathering with her friends or family. Disrespect means you’re out until she acknowledges and corrects her behavior. And if she can’t or won’t, then you’re with the wrong woman.
This will require what I consider a Women’s Reeducation Program. Women have, generally speaking, been conditioned to disrespect men as a default setting. For many of them, they won’t even recognize what they do as disrespect. You’ll sometimes hear them say, “I was just being honest.” Or, the ubiquitous, “You want me to be something I’m not. You don’t want me to be myself.”
And the correct answer is, “Well, if your being disrespectful to me is who you are, then yes, I want you to be someone else. As a matter of fact, I insist on it. And if you can’t, well that’s another conversation. A much shorter one.”
Remember, I said you had to respect her. Not coddle her.
And true enough, plenty of women will opt for that shorter conversation. That’s the point! If she can’t embrace a standard of mutual respect, you want her gone.
With the average woman, this will undoubtedly mean a lot of instructive conversations about respect and the importance of it to a harmonious relationship. I mean that literally. With many women, you’ll need to teach them what fundamental respect is, and why you insist on it as one of the relationship’s values. Many women can hear that if it is delivered consistently, respectfully, and without compromise.
All that said, I don’t think women’s unfamiliarity with respecting their men is the main culprit. The main problem is men who give up on leading, men with weak frame. These are men who feel impotent, powerless to make things change. And their largely right because they are the kind of men who will suffer abuse because she is more important than the values he claims to have. They assume the woman’s frame, which gives her carte blanche for disrespectful, destructive behavior in the relationship. Do you think that will end well?
If that sounds like I’m blaming men, it’s because I am. Weakness is a choice. We do ourselves no favors with excuses for it.
I know that most of this may fall on deaf ears to men who are decades into a bad marriage, where the pattern of disrespect is deeply entrenched, where terminating the relationship would mean devastating emotional and financial consequences. But I am not being heartless in saying that’s the bed you’ve made. There’s a price to correcting it. And indeed, that price, at this point, may be a bridge too far. But it is what it is. The truth doesn’t change because it’s harsh.
For those still struggling with this, I can only suggest praying for strength, and remembering that a Man once took his convictions to the cross for all of us. Upholding your convictions with a woman isn’t really a big ask.
We’ll dig more into this in the essays coming down the pike. Feel free to put your thoughts into the comments. I’ll be happy to read them and respond in future writings.
*https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/news/a559669/the-number-one-predictor-of-divorce-is/
I’m not currently in a relationship, nor have I ever been married, but I’ve found it interesting to observe and analyze the relationships of friends and acquaintances around me at various times in my life, particularly in the last several years. As a child of divorced parents who - even 20+ years after the fact - could not tell you what really went wrong in my parents’ marriage, I’m morbidly fascinated (for lack of better terms) by the hows/whys behind the deterioration of marriages and romantic relationships.
One of my oldest and closest friends has been married to his wife for about 20 years. They have 3 daughters in their mid/late teens. He was the youngest of 8 children in a large, fairly tight-knit family. His wife was an only child (“the ‘only-est’ only child, as I sometimes refer to her). Both of his parents are deceased, while hers are both still alive, and a somewhat onerous/meddling presence in his life.
To put it plainly, he’s in deep. I’ve often joked with him that he’s taken the whole notions of “opposites attract” to a completely new level.
In fact, he may fall somewhat into the category of men you referenced who are - to some degree - “pot-committed” to their present situation. From a financial standpoint, he’d likely be just fine, but there would undoubtedly be a heavy emotional toll. Moreover, as it pertains to the topic of your article, I think that he’s probably let far too much behavior slide for far too long, and is now white-knuckling it until a point where his kids are all graduated and out of the house.
I completely concur with your point about respect, and how losing it is an unmistakable symptom of a likely irreparable situation.
I’d like to think that if a woman ever spoke to me in any way vaguely resembling the manner in which I’ve personally witnessed his wife - and, to a similar extent, his daughters - speak to him, there would be an immediate cessation of the existing relationship, assuming there was one to begin with.
Of all the cliche, somewhat cringeworthy terminology that is used in these spaces, “maintaining frame” is near the top of the hierarchy, but I believe that the underlying idea and meaning is equally - and undeniably - important.
Hi Paul, this really struck a chord with me. The dilemma I faced was that all of my woman’s disrespect towards me came under the guise of mental health issues that arose after she had children. My compassion became the weakness she exploited. A friend of mine tells a similar story and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was quite common.